


Developments

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [25]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Conversation, Gen, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 15:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16746742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: It was, perhaps, the first time they had ever reached some sort of common ground.





	Developments

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long wait and I'm sorry! But here is the next part :) please enjoy and feedback is always welcome! This was a bit experimental for me regarding Jon and the Lady's relationship. 
> 
> Title from the song by Hands Like Houses

Lady Stoneheart did not sleep.

 

Jon knew, because he didn’t sleep much himself these days. The tightness between his shoulders got worse every day, giving him an almost near-constant headache. He spent a lot of time resisting the urge to write another letter to the Wall; if something changed, Edd Tollet would let him know. It didn’t make it any easier.

 

He learned to avoid certain parts of the castle at night, when sleep just would not come. The solar, for instance – the first time he walked in to find Lady Stoneheart standing in the middle of it like a ghost, he nearly smashed his head against the doorframe, he scrambled back so fast. She didn’t even turn to look at him, just stared at the ancient walls as though they held some secret Jon couldn’t see. After that, he didn’t startle when he came across her, but he certainly did not seek her out. If she had been cold to him in life, she seemed near-icy now. And somehow, her brand of ice was even more frigid than the Wall had been.

 

But in the day, he could not stay away so easily. She sat at the high table with him and Sansa, making the other Northern lords uncomfortable with her colorless stare, eyes moving from man to man until none dared look at her anymore. Sansa sat between her and Jon always, though Jon couldn’t tell if she was trying to protect him or not. He was still learning to read Sansa, and while he was much better at it than he had ever been as a child, Sansa was particularly good at schooling her expression into blankness. Her only tell was the way the corners of her mouth twitched – up if she was amused, down when she disapproved – but Jon still didn’t know what it all meant. He wondered if he would ever be able to know what his sister was feeling without having to think about it.

 

He knew she spent time with Lady Stoneheart. One evening, he walked in on the two of them sitting by the fire, Sansa sewing a winter dress for Arya (that the latter would no doubt complain about wearing, Jon thought fondly) and Lady Stoneheart watching intently. Sansa was quietly telling her of Brienne rescuing her and Theon from Ramsey Bolton’s men, after they leapt from the parapet of Winterfell. This, at least, made sense to Jon; earlier in the day, Lady Stoneheart and Brienne met face-to-face for the first time in the yard. The Lady’s expressionless eyes filled with rage and the first unmeasured move was made in the form of a slap that Brienne made no effort to block. “She was never to blame,” Sansa said quietly. “She tried to save me, but…well, you knew Littlefinger. He rescued me from Cersei and I didn’t know that he planned to just…sell me again.”

 

“ _Petyr?_ ”

Sansa stiffened suddenly, as if realizing what she had said. “Yes,” she answered finally. “He’s the one who sold me to the Boltons. He also helped us take Winterfell back from them, after I’d escaped and gone to the Wall, but…”

 

“ _Where_?” The cold anger in the word was like a bucket of ice water being doused over Jon’s head, but he saved Sansa from answering by announcing his presence.

 

“The Wall.” It was the first thing he had said directly to Lady Stoneheart since the Brotherhood’s arrival. Sansa startled a little, but the Lady just turned her head to look at him in the door. He forced himself to walk to them and sit next to Sansa, keeping his sister between himself and Lady Stoneheart like always. “We needed to get him away from Robyn Arryn – and away from Sansa. Once the Long Night is over and Daenerys Targaryen sits on the Iron Throne, he will be of no more use. But until then, he needs to be kept alive.”

 

Lady Stoneheart gazed at him for a long time. Jon looked back, even when every nerve ending in his body was sparking in fear. Finally, she pressed her hand to her throat. “ _Me._ ”

 

Jon didn’t understand, but Sansa did. “You want to kill him?” she murmured.

 

The Lady nodded.

 

Jon nodded too. “I won’t begrudge you that,” he agreed.

 

It was, perhaps, the first time they had ever reached some sort of common ground.

 

**

 

A letter came from Arya announcing that Jaime and Myrcella Lannister had been captured and brought back to Highgarden. “She’s promised Cersei their heads unless she gives up King’s Landing,” he told Sansa quietly when Lady Stoneheart was not around, “but she’s also trying to convince Ser Jaime to fight the Night King.”

 

Sansa bit her lip. “I hope he agrees,” she murmured, “if only for Brienne. She loves that man and I may not understand it, but his loss may crush her.”

 

“He left his sister, if Arya’s word is correct,” Jon pointed out, and Sansa smirked a little; Arya’s word was rarely wrong. “I believe there are a lot of things Ser Jaime might do now.”

 

Sansa’s smile faded a little. “Would Arya kill Myrcella? She’s innocent.”

 

Jon didn’t have an answer, which unsettled them both.

 

Something had to change soon, in any case. The Wall may be secure for the moment, but the snows were falling thicker and closer together with every passing day. The Night King could only be growing stronger for it, and the North weaker. If this war between Daenerys and Cersei dragged on for much longer…

 

Another sleepless night found Jon going over the map of the Wall he already had memorized, trying to find any more weak points that the Night King might choose to break in through. He was examining it so intently that he did not hear the footsteps passing the open door, nor the pause that followed before they continued inside. Only when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and when Ghost gave an almost inaudible snarl, did he look up, startled, to see Lady Stoneheart standing before the table. She stared down at the map for a few seconds before slowly lifting her eyes to his.

 

He suppressed a shiver and said, “My Lady.”

 

Her hand rested on her throat, but she did not apply pressure. Jon waited, as still as he could, for…something. For her to speak, to leave, for the old fear he used to hold for her to choke him again. She gazed at him for a long moment that stretched out like years, until abruptly she dropped her hand and took a seat in the chair across from him. He watched her take a quill and parchment and write slowly, carefully. Then she stood up and, without looking back, left the room.

 

Jon took a deep breath and held it while he reached for the parchment she had left behind. He let it out in a rush when he read her words.

 

_Robb intended to make you Heir to Winterfell in the event of his death._

 

**

 

It continued like that.

 

For every night that Jon found sleep, there were three more that were without. It was on these nights that Lady Stoneheart sought him out and, without uttering a single word, told him all the things he had never known his family wanted for him.

 

_Bran prayed for you in the godswood when he first learned that I was not your mother._

_Sansa sewed a pair of gloves for your tenth nameday._

_Arya begged me to allow you to sit at the high table with her at the feast when King Robert came to Winterfell._

_Rickon never knew that you were not his full brother. He was too young to understand._

And on they went. Jon didn’t understand why she would tell him all of this. It was confirmation that he had desperately craved as a child that he was a part of the Stark family, bastard or not. The confirmation that she had always withheld out of hate. Only now she was telling him that he was. He had always had a family.

He kept the slips of parchment, a small stack of reminders. A mystery to puzzle over when no one else was around. A flicker of warmth when the cold bit down. Little things about his siblings that Catelyn Stark remembered after death. Whatever her intentions were, giving him this – cruelty or kindness – he was grateful.

 

One night was not like the others. She entered the great hall where he sat at the head table with a cup of wine and a letter from Lyanna Mormont. He put down the letter at once when Ghost gave his customary low growl, but Lady Stoneheart did not stop in front of him. Rather, she sat down without hesitation, leaving a chair between them. When she did not produce a quill or parchment, Jon said quietly, “The Riverlands are stable. Some men from the Reach are holding the Twins so that the Lannisters can’t take it. Not that Cersei will,” he added, “considering that King’s Landing is being kept isolated from the rest of the country.” He sighed. “Whatever Daenerys Targaryen says about sparing innocent lives, I do not see her taking the Throne from Cersei without bloodshed, and a lot of it.”

 

For the first time, the Lady raised a hand to her throat. “ _Arya_ ,” she croaked.

 

Jon glanced at her, a little surprised. “She’s still in Highgarden.”

 

But she shook her head slowly. “ _Arya_ ,” she said insistently, but seemed unable to speak beyond that. Frustration rose in her normally blank eyes, until Jon passed her the parchment Lyanna Mormont had written on and the quill and ink he had intended to use to respond. Lady Stoneheart wrote immediately, spidery handwriting spilling from her frail hands, and then passed the parchment back to Jon.

 

She didn’t leave.

 

Jon lowered his eyes to the parchment, which read, _Tell me how Arya became a warrior._

 

He looked up to see the Lady staring at him expectantly. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then murmured, “Father let her train with a swordmaster in King’s Landing. Did you know that?”

 

Lady Stoneheart shook her head.

 

“I gave her Needle,” Jon admitted. “Her sword. I suppose that’s why Father let her learn.” Her eyes were trained on him while he told her everything he knew about Arya, which was not as much as he wanted it to be. A long time had passed since Arya’s brief return to Winterfell, and the stories she brought with her.

 

But he tried, and Lady Stoneheart did not leave. He didn’t have many details, except of the boy she called Gendry. The small battles she had been a part of, her time at Harrenhal and with the Faceless Men, even most of her time with the Brotherhood Without Banners, was unknown to him. Of the Brotherhood, Lady Stoneheart knew more, and she wrote a few brief sentences that connected a few dots.

 

After he spoke for the third time of Gendry, Lady Stoneheart took back the parchment and wrote once more. _She is in love with him._

Jon stared at the words for a long minute. He knew what he had told Arya, about love at Dragonstone, but he had somehow not imagined her _finding_ love, especially so soon. “Arya never wanted…”

 

Lady Stoneheart shrugged. It was an oddly human gesture on her, when her movements always seemed so brittle.

 

He contemplated the words for another moment before asking, “Do you really believe she loves him?”

 

The Lady’s hand rose to her throat and she said confidently, “ _Yes._ ”

 

**

 

There were no more nights of talking, but she continued to give Jon pieces of parchment, and he continued to keep them. Before Jon’s eyes, Lady Stoneheart became more human than Catelyn Stark had ever been to him. He still didn’t know what she was feeling, about any of it, particularly Arya, but she had given him more words beyond death than she ever had in life. He stopped wondering why, and simply accepted them.

 

There was one note that she did not give to him, but left on the table with the map when he was not there. It was in the same place as the first, but the words were something he never thought would come from her.

 

_It was not your fault._

 

It was not an apology, and it was not forgiveness. But Jon kept it with the others anyway.


End file.
